CategoryInspiration

April 6, 2009 — There are an extensive amount of roads you can take in web design, specifically in navigation. Here, we will talk about one specific navigation technique, tab-based navigation. If properly carried out, tabbed navigation can be very clean and organized within a web layout. [Links checked February/10/2017] So what is tabbed navigation? Well, it is essentially a set of buttons most often set horizontally. Tabs generally follow numerous different styling guidelines. First, a tab set usually is attached to or slightly protrudes from a container, like in the example below. Also, notice how the open tab matches the background color of the container, and the other buttons are darker. This is another common styling guideline. When you look at tabbed navigations, you will also notice many styling trends. First, many tabs will have rounded corners on buttons. This helps to create a clean look. Also helping to make a clean look is the use of separation between buttons. Most designs use space to separate buttons, but a bevel, single line, or background color contrast will also look nicely. Read more…

April 4, 2009 — We recently showcased beautiful websites from the fashion industry, and in response to reader requests, we’ll do the same thing here for sports websites. This article showcases the most beautiful website designs from the North American sports industry, including ones for news, teams and leagues, sports apparel and more. As in any industry, sports websites have their own trends, as you will see below. However, because the websites showcased here fall into a number of different categories and serve different purposes, not all of the trends we discuss will be relevant or applicable to all types of sports websites. Read more…

April 1, 2009 — As designers, we are always in constant need of inpiration. Whether it be Web or graphic design, other work to fuel our creativity is essential. Logo design requires the most amount of inspiration, however. Read more…

March 31, 2009 — Web design has come a long way since its beginning, especially in terms of styling. Take a look at a website from 10 years ago and compare it to one from today. The differences are enormous. One of the major changes you will notice is the background. Today, backgrounds are one of the core features that determine how visually interesting a website is. The background holds the theme of the website, and there are a vast amount of possibilities when designing a website background. This article goes over the best practices and popular trends of backgrounds in the current stage of innovative Web design. You may also be interested in the following related posts: * Web Design Trends For 2009 * Mobile Web Design Trends For 2009 Read more…

March 25, 2009 — In this article, we take a closer look at the nature of drop-down navigation menus and analyze situations in which they should or should not be used. Read more…

March 20, 2009 — Art is a thing that attracts almost every individual. Today we would like to share with you two different but very interesting mediums of art which are called as Surreal and Dark Art. These types of art are quite different from other conventional mediums of art. In these medium, artist conveys his thought and imagination in a very mysterious but somewhat fantastic or I should say in a bizarre style. Read more…

March 17, 2009 —

Editor’s Note: An updated collection of user experience research on breadcrumbs is available in Vitaly Friedman’s article, “Designing Effective Breadcrumbs Navigation”.

On websites that have a lot of pages, breadcrumb navigation can greatly enhance the way users find their way around. In terms of usability, breadcrumbs reduce the number of actions a website visitor needs to take.

March 12, 2009 — Some say that web design without typography is like an orange without its peel, it just isn’t complete. Typography encompasses the reality of effective web design and achieves success in creating web page identity, eye-catching sites, and the enhancement of visual appearance. Typography is much more than the “art of text”, it’s the evolution of creativity within simple to intricate web designs. One can say that a good architecture needs great support, the same concept can be applied to web design in the sense that a good blog could do without the use of typography, but an astounding one could use the creative support. Typography leaves you with the option of bringing together simple creativity with unique and effective communication in order to get your blog or sites main focus across. Now, with all of this information at hand here are 40 fantastic blogs that will allow you to expand your knowledge base of what typography really is. You may want to take a look at the following related posts: * Useful Design Tools For Web Typography * Useful Type Setting Principles * Free Fonts For Professional Design * Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design Read more…

March 12, 2009 — From a web designer’s perspective, it can be very interesting to look at the top websites from a particular industry to see how they relate to their target audience, the different approaches that are used, and how they compare to websites in other industries. Read more…

March 9, 2009 — The key to smart strategic Web design is finding an appropriate and interactive way to display information. One comes upon endless possibilities when searching for ways to display information. One solution, slideshows and sliders, is an excellent way to display information such as images in an organized and compact manner. Slider galleries are excellent for organizing content into a nice clean module. Read more…